It’s been awhile since my last blog post, but things haven’t exactly been quiet on the Facebook API front. There are tons of apps going up on Facebook every day, and its been pretty exciting. Hopefully RFacebook has been helping you all get your ideas out there.

There’s now an official home page for RFacebook:

http://rfacebook.rubyforge.org/

This will hopefully have the latest docs and information about the Gem. There has also been some updates to the API syntax:

“Facepricot” Responses

Every RFacebook API call returns a Facepricot document. This is a wrapper for an Hpricot XML document. Note that ALL of the standard Hpricot methods still apply (you can even grab the original Hpricot document via xml.hpricot and use the Hpricot stuff directly). However, a Facepricot document gives you some neat methods that simplify your code. Now, you don’t have to type this:

sess.friends_get.search("//uid").map{|xmlnode| xmlnode.inner_html} // get an array of all friend UIDs
sess.friends_get.at("//uid").inner_html // get the first UID of friends

Instead, you can type this:

sess.friends_get.uid_list // get an array of all friend UIDs
sess.friends_get.uid // get the first UID of friends

Much cleaner. Hopefully that helps out.

Easier Logging

Another highly requested feature: logging. Now you can do:

sess.logger = MyLogger.new

or, if you use Rails

sess.logger = RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER

FacebookSession uses the “debug” log method on that logger to provide some useful behind-the-scenes information.

Caching

Yep, caching is built in now. If you make a call like cached_friends_get, the FacebookSession will automatically cache the response.